The terrarium had a temperate rainforest theme. The centrepiece was the New Zealand epiphytic fern Pyrrosia serpens mounted on a piece of cork bark, with its shining green fronds curving gently upwards. It was surrounded by a lush carpet of a variety of mosses and the clubmoss Selangia. The final step was to add a culture of springtails. I finished it just after 5pm and decided it was time to imbibe some of the Zauberpilze. I took two of the larger ones in my jar, one from each flush, and a couple of very tiny ones.
While waiting for the come-up I got my camera out to get a good photo of the terrarium. I was playing with the lights and settings and lost track of time. By the time I had finished, around 40 minutes had passed, and as soon as I stood up I already felt a little dizzy and nauseous.
I went to the living room and arranged the terrarium on the coffee table, shining a torch through the glass lid for maximum visual effect. I put on the Craig Charles funk and soul show and amused myself during the come-up by running and sliding along the floor. My first sign of visuals was the shadow of the candle holder on the wall moving.
I had a look at the terrarium again. The refracted light made a dappled pattern around the jar, and this was moving and changing. The plants in the terrarium were now an intense vibrant green. Inside the moss was glistening and I could see some sort of glowing energy flowing along the strands.
I lay down on the floor and put my head between the speakers to see if anything interesting was going on on the ceiling. The wallpaper was the typical German wallpaper with little knobs all over it, an ironically perfect fuel for mushroom visuals. The knobs soon began arranging themselves into patterns and the whole ceiling started breathing in and out. I had the impression of a birds-eye view of an ancient ruined city. Streets were lined with wallpaper knobs, but these streets were constantly snaking around and reforming around a central point. Colors were shifting and changing all the time, and a purple cloud washed over my vision.
At some point I got up to have another look at the terrarium, and the room started to distort. The terrarium itself was a bright central feature that seemed to exist separately from its surroundings; all around it were distortions. The coffee table was no longer flat, the corners no longer right-angled.
I went back to lying on the floor. My mood was now continually shifting from euphoria to anxiety, with memories of various socially awkward moments being dragged up in my mind. At times I was struck by a bleak feeling of loneliness, like the trip was a battle that I was fighting without allies.
Feeling a little cold and lonely, I went into the bedroom where my wife was resting, and persuaded her to return to the living room. Feeling a bit hungry I eventually managed to hunt down some brownies in the kitchen. They were individually wrapped and in my state I struggled to open one. The bag suddenly ripped and the brownie popped neatly out, flying in a great lazy arc over the coffee table, bouncing off the sofa and rolling across the floor. I stared at the empty packet trying to work out what had happened. My wife started laughing. It was like a pressure valve had been released and I suddenly burst into a fit of hysterical laughter, emptying the built-up tension from the trip. I was bent over double cramping with laughter for what may have been a couple of minutes.
I lay under a duvet on the sofa next to my wife. The light was at the centre of what looked like a space wormhole in the ceiling, a rounded cone into which lines of wallpaper nobs marched endlessly. I felt unable to move, like my limbs were made of stone. When I closed my eyes, repeated rainbow patterns were dancing and pulsing. Feeling hungry again, I tried to get of the sofa but couldn’t, it felt like the sofa was swallowing me. The floor seemed to continue endlessly, the wall in the far distance. When the presenter spoke on the radio between songs, the voices became distorted and nonsensical. Sometimes when I closed my eyes I had the impression of flying through space.
I had a last look at the terrarium, and I couldn’t quite comprehend the beauty of this tiny world that I had created. Tears were streaming down my face as I peered through the glass. My eyes were drawn to a springtail, walking back and forth along the fronds of moss, searching for food. I found it amazing that only a couple of hours previously I had turned that springtail’s world upside down, ripping him suddenly from the drab world of the springtail colony and dumping him into this brand unfamiliar green and lush rainforest world. And yet the springtail was unbothered, continuing his endless quest for nourishment. It came to my mind that I would never be happy if I continued to compare myself to others. I should be like a springtail, and keep going regardless of what the world throws at me.
With the effects diminishing I was able to get up and start clearing up the kitchen and prepare to make dinner. The come-down came with bursts of intense euphoria. It felt like the hard work had been done and it was party time, I was going to surf the wave of euphoria all the way to the bottom. At one point I had two bowls on my fingers and was dancing around the kitchen. Then I started spinning round and screaming silently into the sky. My wife woke up briefly and gave me a confused look, wondering what the hell I was doing.
The euphoria gave way to a warm glow of satisfaction. I put on Wagner and let the music wash over me like a warm bath. It felt like the most beautiful thing I ever heard. I started to cook and clean up my terrarium stuff, putting the springtail lessons into action. Almost completely sober and with dinner cooking I put on some Glenn Gould. It was like returning to an old friend to see out the trip.
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